Remembering Apollo - 40 Years Later

I wasn’t alive when Apollo 11 reached the moon forty years ago today. I was alive for Apollo 16 and 17 but less than a year old so my memories are dim.

I do remember reading The High Road by Ben Bova from 1981 and dreaming of becoming an astronaut. That dream was never fulfilled and I’ve become less infatuated with space travel as I’ve aged. That seems sad.

I don’t see many signs of optimism for the future of mankind today. We’ve just lived through a decade that went backward instead of forward. And the prospects for improvement seem dim.

Here are some of the Apollo anniversary web tributes that have caught my attention.

1. The NASA 40th anniversary website
2. A 1969 editorial from Matthew Cheney’s grandfather.
3. Charlie Stross on the stunt value of Apollo and the high cost of future missions
4. Key facts about the spacecraft
5. We Choose the Moon, a Flash-based recreation of the mission, with live audio.
6. Kottke.org big moon post
7. Lane Wallace gets some of the mystery back
8. Charlie Stross reminds us what we really did gain from the space program
9. Tom Wolfe says NASA needed better philosophers. Perhaps they should hire me.